Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A (58 page)

She folded her arms in front of her, shaking her head. 'And what did I do then?'

'You drove down a dark dead-end street – all the streetlights were out – and walked around the car and fired a shot through the passenger window that would appear to have been fired at you, and then you probably used the butt of the gun to knock a bigger hole in the safety glass.'

'Probably. Only probably? You're not sure?'

'I don't know for sure what you used, but probably we'll find out eventually. But what it was – it was another mistake.'

He waited. She didn't ask, eyes fixed, unyielding. So he continued. There was just the one bullet hole in the safety glass, which was the problem. You thought the window would break with the shot, but it just made a nice neat little hole, didn't it, some spiderwebs around it. So you had to hammer a bigger one, something two bullets might have passed through. Except for the reality that even
two
.25 caliber bullets won't put a fist-sized hole in safety glass. You probably couldn't get one with four.'

Her expression remained impassive, but she eased herself down onto the bench against the hallway wall. 'This is fascinating,' she said.

'Right. The other thing, the clincher if you want to hear it...'

'Oh, please ..."

The venom in her voice paralyzed him for a second. In a way it was salutary, helping wipe out the last traces of any sympathetic feeling. He felt the scar stretch through his lips, knew he was giving her his piano-wire smile, the one Flo had told him could give nightmares to mass-murderers.

'This was the moment, just this morning, when it all came together. Before that, almost everything was there – I didn't know that nobody had heard two shots, but the rest of it. Except I didn't
want
to see it. I went to adjust the seat in the Plymouth. You know the car. It's the same one you and Locke rode in.'

Still nothing. No reaction.

'Remember the other night, you and me counting "one two three", pushing the seat up so you could drive? You remember that? So this morning, there I was sitting in the driver's seat, and it struck me what was so wrong about the bullet hole in the door of
your
car, the driver's door. You want to know what that was?'

Silence.

'It would have had to go through
you
first.'

Finally, against her will: '
What
are you talking about?'

'I'm talking about you being unable to drive, to reach the foot pedals without the seat pushed all the way forward. And if the seat was forward, which it had to be, the trajectory of the shot from the hole in the window to the hole in the upholstery would have had to hit you. It would have had to go through you, Loretta.' He waited. 'So you weren't in the seat. You were outside, in the street, firing the one shot – the
one shot
everybody heard – through the safety glass. The one you said almost hit you.'

'You're wrong. I was trying to get away from there. Chris had just been shot, the seat must have slid back with the acceleration.'

Glitsky had broken witnesses before, and when you started getting denials of details, you knew you were there. He crossed the foyer, sat at the opposite end of the bench. He didn't intend to break her. Not before he made her undo some of the damage she'd done – to herself, to Elaine, to Kevin Shea – and she was the only one who could do it. He needed her for that first, then he'd deal with the rest.

He almost whispered it. 'You killed him, Loretta. You had to.'

She wasn't giving it up. '
Why
should I have killed Chris Locke?'

She was leading him there. 'The simple answer is because you couldn't control him anymore. But it really wasn't that simple. He was blackmailing you, you were blackmailing him. You knew each other's secrets.'

'About
what
?'

'About the money you laundered through the Pacific Moon.'

That he had come to this knowledge, finally, rocked her, although she covered it – her tightened lips were all that betrayed it. 'I explained that to you, Abe. That was completely legitimate.'

'No,' he said. 'Chris Locke was prosecuting the case, and then he met you and the two of you became involved, wasn't that it?'

'No. None of this is it.'

'He represented the DA's office and dropped the charges, said there wasn't a case and you got to keep the money...'

'That's not true. This is ...' She was standing up, but he took hold of her by the wrist, held her. She sat back down.

'But the money wasn't why you killed him. What he knew made you nervous maybe, but the records had been destroyed, cleaned up, sanitized. You had the same thing on each other. You could live with that.'

She looked at him, waiting. She'd give him nothing.

'Because he rejected you and he took up with Elaine. Because now he was really out of your control. He was going to play fast and loose with your daughter, your baby. You could handle that for yourself – but your
daughter
wasn't going to have it like you did. She was going to have it better. You were going to protect her because you knew what Chris Locke would do. It would be what he'd done to you.'

'And exactly what was that?'

'He'd use her, then throw her on the slag heap when she became ... inconvenient.'

'I haven't been with him in years. I wouldn't...'

Glitsky nodded, the first admission.

'Besides, you can't prove any of this. I did not kill Chris, I did not launder any money. For God's sake, Abe, it's just...'

He stood, walked to the window next to the door and looked out, his back to her. The limo was parked right there.

He counted to fifteen, then without turning, said, 'The proof is in your hand, Loretta. You going to shoot me in the back? What are you going to say? That you thought I was a burglar? A rapist?'

He turned around.

Loretta was standing by the hallway bench, clutch purse in one hand, the small gun leveled at him in the other.

Glitsky's eyes went to it. 'I've got a good friend who's an attorney and I've left a letter with him,' he lied. 'It says that in the event of my death, they should compare the ballistics on the bullet that killed me with the one that killed Chris Locke.' He nodded at the gun. 'They're going to match, Loretta. And the letter goes on about a few of the other things we've talked about this morning. It also mentions your name.'

He took a step toward her. 'It's over, Loretta. It's over.'

Slowly she lowered the gun. 'I had to kill Chris. He was going to ruin my daughter ... was already doing it...'

Glitsky nodded. He already knew this. 'I'm going to need to take that gun for evidence,' he said.

'You can't think I'm going to give you this gun.'

'I'd prefer it,' he said, 'but it doesn't really matter. I don't need it.'

'Without it you don't have any physical evidence. You don't have a case.' She took a step toward him, her expression set, tone low. 'We don't have to have this happen, Abe. I can throw it away, get rid of it...'

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pocket recorder he always carried, turned it off, played back the last few moments, her admission that she had killed Locke. When he flicked it off, he held out his hand. 'The gun,' he said.

She gave it one last try. 'Abe. This won't work. Alan Reston won't prosecute me. You won't even get him to go to a judge for an arrest warrant.'

"That may be so. But I can arrest you for murder without a warrant. When I book you into county jail, the press will be there, and they'll ask me why and I'll tell them. And then Alan Reston will either have to prosecute or explain why he doesn't, which he can't do. And even if he doesn't, okay, then you get away with murder, but I've done my job.' Glitsky took a step toward her, his hand outstretched. 'Now either use that gun or give it to me.'

It took her a long moment, but finally she turned it barrel in and handed it to him. As he put it into his pocket, she asked him, 'What do you really want, Abe?'

'The same as I've always wanted, Loretta. I want to arrest my suspect. I want some protection for Kevin Shea.'

'And what do I get?'

Her singularity of purpose continued to impress him. It never ended. 'There's always a deal, Loretta, isn't there?'

She waited.

'You think I'm about to let you walk on a premeditated murder?'

'I don't know what you're going to do, Abe.' She stood in front of him. 'I'm telling you what I
need
, that's all. It's your decision.'

'Either way,' Glitsky said, 'you're dead politically.'

'Maybe.' Her eyes rested on him. 'You're such a fool,' she said, 'but we could have had it all.'

The doorbell rang, followed by a knock at the door. Another. 'Senator?' The limo driver.

'Do we have a deal, Abe?'

Another knock. 'Senator, we're running a little late here.'

'I need your word, Abe.'

Glitsky, in spite of his official administrative leave, was still the nominal head of homicide,
and
a cop inside out. He had known she would probably try something like this devil's trade, but there was still the moment before it was irrevocably done. The temptation to let it go – he didn't have to take it out all the way . . .

He suddenly felt clammy, sick with the portent of it.

'We'll talk about the
possibility
of a deal later,
but no guarantees
. I want you clear on that. You either go with me to Kevin Shea right now or I take you downtown. And if I do that, it's beyond the control of either of us. You're charged with murder and it can't be undone. Or' – he pointed a finger – 'or I take you out to Kezar Pavilion, where you might do a little good. It's
your
decision, Loretta. You decide.'

Her bluff called, she hesitated, took in a breath, then crossed the foyer to the door. 'I'll tell him I'm driving over with you.'

Glitsky went to make his phone call to Wes Farrell.

In response to the four outbreaks of interracial scuffling and five serious injuries in the last half hour, the National Guard had moved into positions of closer conformity with the proposed march route, and the trucks with their troops had closed off all traffic and were lining the streets on either side of Golden Gate Park. New arrivals wanting to join the march were going to have to leave their cars blocks away and breach this wall and its security measures as they walked in, and hundreds were doing just that. In the park's panhandle the tent city took up the center and the tide of people would in theory flow around the roped-off living areas.

Special Agent Margot Simms – who had elected not to act in concert either with the San Francisco police or the National Guard – had her driver pull to the side of the road only four blocks from Kevin Shea's apartment. She looked down the hill at the flood of people moving toward Kezar, the troops, the stalled traffic.

How to get through that? Well she was with the FBI, that was how. She wasn't going to put her own men at risk, and she was going to do her job, which was apprehend Kevin Shea, by force if necessary. She gave the order to circumvent the sawhorses that closed off the streets and head down, past the Pavilion, to her destination. She did not give a good goddamn what, or who, might be in the way. She knew that Wes Farrell, the lawyer, was going to be facing the same problem she was, and he would have no identification to flash to get him by this hurdle.

They were still ahead.

The car crept through the pedestrians, several of them whacking the roof, the hood. Two blocks in three-and-a-half minutes – then they were stopped by a couple of teenaged National Guardsmen, rifles out and jittery.

Simms got out of the front seat, held up her badge, identifying herself. The two boys – one with a black nametag reading 'Morgan,' the other a thin, hawk-faced boy whose tag read 'Escher,' looked at one another, and Morgan said, 'Yes, ma'am?'

'My colleagues and I need to breach your line here.'

Again, the silent consultation. Morgan said, 'I'll have to get permission, ma'am.'

Simms stiffened. '
I'm
giving you permission, son. This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation and we are in a hurry.'

'Yes, ma'am.' But neither man moved.

'Well?'

'Well, our orders are to keep vehicular traffic out of the parade route...'

'I'll go check.' Escher ran off. Morgan made a gesture. 'It won't be long,' he said. 'Five minutes.'

Farrell, more familiar with the city than Simms, figured the rally would be a mob scene, so he went the back way over Portola and Twin Peaks, thinking he would wind up on Ashbury and then park. He could walk the rest of the way, which he supposed he'd have to do in any event.

The beeper went off as he was passing by a gas station on 17th. He pulled in, ran to the pay phone and punched numbers.

'You've got the senator with you? Herself?' Farrell couldn't believe it.

Glitsky was curt. 'Give me the address. I don't have any time.'